Rare earth market update on May 20, 2026
The overall performance of China's domestic rare earth market remains sluggish. Amid the interplay of bullish and bearish factors, the buyer's market still holds a dominant position, which is mainly reflected in varying degrees of price declines for mainstream products and low actual trading volume. Today, the prices of praseodymium oxide, praseodymium-neodymium metal, holmium oxide and dysprosium-iron alloy have decreased by to RMB 810,000 per ton, RMB 880,000 per ton, RMB 540,000 per ton and RMB 1,270,000 per ton respectively. With the continuous decline in prices of rare earth raw materials recently, the prices of rare earth permanent magnet materials and their scraps have also been adjusted downward. For instance, the price of 55N neodymium-iron-boron blank square materials decreased by about RMB 10 per kilogram, and the price of praseodymium-neodymium based neodymium-iron-boron scraps decreased by about RMB 5 per kilogram.
According to CTIA GROUP, the main bearish factors include prominent market sentiment of purchasing on price rises rather than price falls, tight capital liquidity of downstream rare earth manufacturers and difficulty in rapid market recovery in the short term. These combined factors result in weak downstream demand and further undermine suppliers' quotation confidence. The main bullish factors are as follows. Firstly, driven by high energy prices and limited short-term growth of market spot supply, holders have limited room for price concessions. Secondly, the rapid development of downstream rare earth industries such as new energy vehicles, robots and wind power generation is expected to boost the consumption volume of rare earth functional materials in the future.
Price of rare earth products on May 20, 2026
Images of erbium oxide
